EXCERPTS FROM CD AND RELATED REVIEWS

The world is not exactly bereft of recordings of Beethoven's last three
piano sonatas. But when a new edition appears, so beautifully played and
perceptively interpreted as Freddy's Kempf's third solo disc for BIS, to
say nothing of its splendid recording quality, you don't worry about the
back catalogue.

I expect this highly regarded 23-year-old pianist will
encounter a 'show me' attitude from seasoned critics who've beard all the
great Beethoven players, and man their posts with barbed pencils and
dog-eared Urtexts at the ready. They'll scrutinize Kempf's late Beethoven
with a fine-tooth comb, comparing him with Schnabel, Brendel, Goode,
Arrau, Solomon and Kempff with two 'f's. As well they should, for Freddy
Kempf more than merely holds his own in such august company.

I wonder if Kempf has lived longest with Sonata No. 30, whose
improvisatory opening unfolds in a tellingly proportioned manner. Even the
occasional inverted dynamic sounds convincingly Beethoven-like (a subito
piano upbeat to bar 63 rather than a sforzando). Although he doesn't
differentiate Beethoven's legato versus non-legato articulations in the
second movement to the extent that Charles Rosen or Annie Fischer do, he
compensates with scrupulous and richly coloured chord voicings in the
third- movement theme and variations. The fifth variation's woodwind-like
writing is energetically contoured, as are Beethoven's patented long
trills.

My only nits to pick with Kempf's songful fluidity throughout the lyrical
Op. 110 Sonata are the outsized dynamic contrasts in the Allegro molto's
opening measures, which lessen the impact of the first fortissimo just a
few bars on. At the same time Kempf is one of the few pianists who honours
left-hand sforzando displacements (bars 9-13) without any weakening of the
important right-hand melodic downbeats. Among modern versions, I'd rate
this performance on the same level with Richter's later interpretations
and Awadagin Pratt's underrated one on EMI (currently unavailable).

Some may prefer their Op. 111 introduction slower and starker, with more
anguish in the rising chain of suspensions, though Kempf's headlong sweep
and effortless fingerwork in the Allegro con brio more than compensate.
The pianist navigates the Arietta's epic seas on a solid, even keel, but
doesn't entirely give himself over to the movement's jazzier abandon and
obsessed rhythms. Still and all, Kempf emerges more than ever on this disc
as his own master. A truly admirable release, highly recommended.

- Jed Distler

====SUNDAY TIMES (UK), June 10, 2001====Stephen Pettitt

THIS RECORDING by the Classical Brit award-winning Freddy Kempf of the
last three sonatas vies with the best of the recent releases.

Kempf plays a
rather aggressive-sounding and closely recorded Yamaha instrument, but his
touch has finesse, and he elicits a vast range of colours from the
monster.

Perhaps the most demanding passage in the three works is the
slow, quiet, transcendent music towards the end of the Arietta of Op 111,
where long trills further complicate the already rhythmically complex
part-writing. Kempf's playing here has astonishing clarity. When the music
is brasher, the going outwardly tougher, as in the final Fugue of Op 110,
his strength of finger really tells.

But success in these works is not
just a matter of technique, and Kempf shows that he has the vision to take
us with him all the way on these three extraordinary, still very
contemporary journeys.

Kempf is still only 24 and one may presume, if he follows the precedent of
other pianists, that he will record these sonatas several times in the
course of his career as his view of them perhaps subtly changes.

Already
his interpretations have a rich maturity and are presented here with a
particularly beautiful recording of piano tone. The piano is still the
most difficult instrument to record faithfully and the BIS sound engineers
have excelled themselves in Stockholm's former Academy of Music.

Kempf's
insight into the character of each of these Olympian masterpieces is
astonishing and is allied to formidable virtuosity and musicianship. It is
perhaps in Op.110 that he proclaims himself a Beethoven interpreter of the
front rank by his judgment of tempo variation and overall command of what
is an especially complex and challenging structure. His playing of the
fugal passages is magisterial in its combination of intellectual and
emotional pianism.

- Michael Kennedy

ENCORES:(1) Kreisler arr. by Rachmaninov for piano - Liebesleid (from live performance) and
(2) Schumann Warum from live performance

LIEBESLEID
Photo courtesy of Meridian TV

From GuildMusic
"Another of Kreisler's original pieces for violin and piano, one
of a pair (the other being Liebesfreud), is Leibesleid, which
sums up the soul of old Vienna - not as a large concert-waltz
in the manner of the Strauss dynasty, but as an intimate,
gentle reminiscence. It is marked to be played in the style of
the Austrian (or German) Lšndler, an old dance in slowish 3/4
time, which many believe was the forerunner of the waltz, with
which it shares certain similarities. In any event, Kreisler's
delightfully languorous piece, with its evocative and dreamy
ending, is a magnificent composition of its type, a perfect gem
of the composer's craft."
- Robert Matthew-Walker

"FREDDY KEMPF'S performance of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto
in this Royal Philharmonic Orchestra programme was the complete
antidote to the austerely manufactured one of the Third
Concerto, also at the Barbican, that Evgeny Kissin had given
with the Philharmonia a couple of nights earlier. There was a
communicative vitality here, a true dialogue between piano and
orchestra and an engagingly youthful ardour..."